“He created the situation which led to his downfall in 1922.” “The Conservatives kept him in power only as long as they needed him.” Which view about Lloyd George in the years 1918 to 1922 is the more convincing?

Before analysing the separate statements it is perhaps rather prudent to look at a little bit of background as it could be argued that Lloyd George was already perfectly positioned to fall even before the 1918 election. It is important to keep in mind that Lloyd George was in a rather unique position of ‘a Prime Minister without a party’ due to the split of his own Liberal Party in 1916. This being the case, Lloyd George was always in a precarious position that could, in theory, be taken away in an instant should the Conservatives decide to do so. Should one subscribe to this idea then the former statement is made redundant immediately which inevitably makes the latter the more convincing case. However if one does not subscribe to such a belief then the situation becomes rather more complex. The Conservatives had not been in government on their own since 1905 and there was a severe lack of confidence in the party, even if they would have had a majority by proxy had they fought the election on their own (the Liberal party split had caused too much damage to the party and Labour wasn’t big enough to present a realistic threat). The general feeling had been summed up in 1918 by Arthur Balfour: “Our party, on the old lines, will never have any future again in this country”. Lloyd George could bring something new to the Conservatives. Nevertheless Lloyd George, it may be argued, was merely a ‘convenience’ for the Conservatives, who could pull the strings and have an easy scapegoat if and when things went wrong. Lloyd George would also serve to let the Conservatives ‘readjust’ themselves and gain back confidence before dropping him. Yet the converse could also hold true: this apparent dependency on Lloyd George could be taken as weakness as opposed to a shrewd political move. Yet the advantages of keeping Lloyd George outweighed the disadvantages, or at least, that was the opinion of the time. After the Great War had come to an end the stance was taken that the war would result in ‘a land fit for heroes’ and the general public consensus was that Lloyd George- ‘the man who won the war- embodied this. The subsequent Coupon Election (so-called after Lloyd George and Bonar Law signed statement of support coalition candidates received) seemed to entrench this idea with the majority of MPs wishing to remain in the coalition and the public voting overwhelmingly in favour of Lloyd George’s coalition (88% of MPs in the coalition were elected). In fact his dominance seemed so affirmed that a Liberal colleague went so far as to say, “the only thing the country listened to was what you said”. Some historians claim the election was essentially a plebiscite in favour of Lloyd George. However the circumstances were already being created for his downfall, regardless of the cosmetic appearance at first glance. It boils down to one simple fact: there was an excess of public optimism that created extremely high expectations- expectations that simply couldn’t be met due to Britain’s post-war condition. Lloyd George’s bold proclamations during the election that he would ‘make Germany pay’ and provide ‘homes fit for heroes’ only inflated such expectations. The simple fact was that Britain’s economy was in no shape to satisfy what the public wanted. While this factor was not created by Lloyd George personally, he may have been able to nullify the problem simply by demanding Britain’s money back. While Britain was heavily in debt to the US, she was actually owed more by other countries, especially Russia, than she owed to the US. Yet Lloyd George’s focus was on trade agreements and not debt collecting, thus leaving the country in debt and the economy ill-equipped to meet public expectation- a critical component one must have to win an election and absolutely critical that Lloyd George retain should he wish to stay in power. He needed to be an electoral asset to the Conservatives, thus leading Lloyd George to delegate no important tasts to colleagues: he wanted to be and be seen as personally successful. However it was a dangerous strategy and the corollary was every political success and failure would be regarded as his own. By June 1921 unemployment had rocketed to 2 million from around 300,000 in 1920. Lloyd George also didn’t help himself when it came to overseas competition. As a Liberal he believed in a free trade policy despite the majority of Conservatives calling for tariffs on foreign goods. Lloyd George’s plan was thus ‘Squandermania’ or, simply put, huge budget cut-backs. Lloyd George set up a committee headed by Eric Geddes and the ‘Geddes Axe’ pruned £64 million after departments had already cut £75 million from the budget. In 1922 government spending was cut by 12%. Farmers were hit the most by the campaign and lack of government support alienated their votes as well as around 40-50 MPs representing rural areas. Lloyd George’s housing scheme- headed by Addison- failed to produce ‘homes fit for heroes’, but ‘homes only heroes would agree to live in’ (the entire scheme was chopped by the Geddes Axe). This led to a decline in public opinion and Lloyd George’s position as an electoral asset to the Conservatives seemed to waver ever more. Despite avoiding a General Strike in 1921, around 86 million working days were lost in that year and relations with miner’s turned sour. In addition to increased demand from Trade Unions, Lloyd George’s handling of a workers’ strike in January 1919 was brutally excessive as crowds were baton-charged by police and later troops, lorries and tanks were sent in. This alarmed Tories who wanted to appeal to the working-class, not use militancy, in order to prevent Labour from rising. Such militancy was sustained when it came to Lloyd George’s initial stance on Ireland and many backbench Conservatives began to intensely dislike Lloyd George’s dictatorial style. Yet it wasn’t the violence that they disliked, it was the fact that Lloyd George compromised with Sinn Fein to only retain 6/9 Ulster counties. This outraged the Conservatives, who had even been called ‘the Unionist party’, as they saw Ireland as an integral part of Great Britain. A Tory MP was disgusted that “the man in power [in Ireland] is the man with the gun”. Even Bonar Law, arguably the most important man for Lloyd George to have on his side, admitted that “I doubt whether I would have voted for [the settlement” after seeing violence spark once more in Ireland. Lloyd George’s Irish policy seemed an obvious and costly failure. Lloyd George didn’t fare much better when it came to foreign policy which was a constant worry and distraction through the coalition’s lifespan. The 1919 Paris peace conference produced the infamous Treaty of Versailles that still splits opinion to this day. Indeed it was much the same for the contemporaries. In April 1919, 233 Conservative MPs signed a telegram expressing fears that the Treaty was too lenient. This idea was rather popular and was shown in Lord Northcliffe’s papers, The Times, and The Daily Mail. As if having the Conservative part of the coalition unimpressed with the Treaty wasn’t bad enough, the Liberal side branded the Treaty as too harsh and Maynard Keynes’s Economic Consequences Of The Peace made it fashionable in intellectual circles to condemn Treaty of Versailles and Lloyd George’s part in it. His policies didn’t work. After the lengthy Paris peace conference the Prime Minister attended 23 full-scale international conferences. Contemporaries called them his ‘circuses’ and one historian called them ‘meaningless gyrations’. He couldn’t overcome French resentment towards Germans or solve the problem of US isolation from world affairs. April 1922 saw the Genoa conference take place which aimed to sort out global economic affairs, rebuild central and eastern Europe, and negotiate a relationship between capitalism European economies and the newly formed USSR. Lloyd George hoped this conference would ‘restore his star to the zenith’ and pave the way for a successful general election, though it was ultimately counter-productive. The only result was disastrous: outcast nations USSR and Germany met and signed the Treaty of Rapallo. However possibly the most damaging foreign policy issue from Lloyd George, especially when it came to his delicate relationship with the Conservatives, was the Chanak crisis of 1922. Lloyd George helped negotiate the Treaty Of Sèvres with Turkey where most of Ottoman Empire was parcelled out between victorious powers of WWI. Settlement terms were so harsh it helped provoke a nationalist revolt against the Sultan. Army officer Mustapha Kemal set up a provincial government and began war of liberation with the aim of wresting Smyrna from Greeks. Britain’s ‘official’ stance was to back Greece, though they backed the loser. In August 1922 the Turkish massacred about 100,000 Greeks in Smyrna then pushed on. Chanak seemed to be in danger and a war against Turkey seemed possible. The public didn’t want way; they were already fatigued from WWI. The Daily Mail headline “Get Out Of Chanak” was an order for Lloyd George, not Kemal, and encapsulated the strong public opinion. But the PM was determined to stay. Lloyd George told commander General Harrington to present the Turks with an ultimatum to withdraw their forces. To some this was needlessly provocative and fortunately Harrington ignored the order, leading to an amicable settlement replacing Sèvres with the more moderate Treaty Of Lausanne. Chanak caused Lloyd George and the coalition much harm. His pro-Greek policy offended the traditional pro-Turk Conservative stance and the PM seemed to be recklessly risking war at a time of general war-weariness in Britain. Conservative and public opinion was summed up in a letter Bonar Law wrote to The Times: “We cannot act alone as policeman of the world”. Chanak occurred at crucial time: the Irish settlement appeared to be collapsing and now scandal erupted highlighting moral bankruptcy of Lloyd George’s regime. He was accused of selling knighthoods and peerages to supplement his own personal ‘political fund’. Such blatant disregard to the honours system appalled the Conservatives. In September 1921 Lloyd George called a Cabinet meeting in the Scottish Highlands to coincide with his holiday- highlighting his selfishness and annoying the Conservatives further. The PM seldom visited the House of Commons, leaked secret information to the press and Bonar Law claimed that if Lloyd George spoke freely for five minutes then he’d have to retire from public life. The key to Lloyd George’s success would, ultimately, hinge on the Tories. Despite being the PM, the Cabinet reflected the Conservative dominance in the government and the coalition. They controlled all of the major offices, thus held immense sway. The Conservative-Liberal links remaining for as long as they did could arguably all be attributed to one man: Bonar Law, aka, ‘the lynchpin’ of the coalition. Bonar Law and Lloyd George complemented each other and Baldwin went so far as to say they formed “the most perfect partnership in political history”. Bonar Law was an effective mediator between Lloyd George and Tory backbenchers, keeping both sides informed and, for the most part, co-operating. Some historians believe that Bonar law alone was the one who kept the Conservatives in the mind-set of ‘needing’ Lloyd George- never mind Lloyd George being dependent on the Conservatives; he was dependent on Bonar Law keeping the majority coalition party on side. Indeed, when Bonar Law resigned in May 1921, a severe blow was dealt to the PM and The Financial Times predicted “the beginning of the end of the coalition government”. Bonar Law’s replacement- Austin Chamberlain- was a poor communicator and was critical of Lloyd George (though he failed to communicate this to his backbenchers). Asquith likened the coalition under these two to a pair of scissors with only one blade. However it would perhaps be too much to blame Lloyd George’s failures and subsequent fall completely on Bonar Law’s leaving. It would be more apt to see this event as a speeding up of events. In fact it was the growing failures of Lloyd George- failing to deliver on promises, floundering hopelessly with foreign and imperial policy, alienating areas of the electorate, and failing to take Conservative opinion into account and acting more like a President- that led to the Conservatives realising they no longer needed him. In this sense the two statements cannot possibly be separated because one, in essence, caused the other to happen and vice versa. The honours scandal combined with the perceived warmongering of Lloyd George at Chanak (possibly in an attempt to force the right atmosphere to win an election) was the tipping point- and there was no Bonar Law to try and temper the disillusionment. On the 19th October 1922 Chamberlain called a meeting at the Carlton Club and argued that the Conservatives should stay in the coalition as the Tories were incapable of winning an election without it (failed to articulate he wouldn’t want Lloyd George remaining as PM though). His case was unconvincing and came at a time when an independent Conservative candidate had won a by-election in Newport, beating the coalition candidate and suggesting that the Conservatives could, in fact, go it alone as public opinion of the coalition was rapidly decreasing. Baldwin captured the general Conservative feeling towards Lloyd George: “A dynamic force is a very terrible thing… the Liberal party… has been smashed to pieces… the same thing will happen to our party [if we stay in the coalition and keep Lloyd George]”. Bonar Law’s subsequent speech, while praising the work Lloyd George had done, seemed to suggest that it was time for the Conservatives to move on and a motion to do just that carried overwhelmingly in favour, 187:87. As mentioned previously, it is impossible to separate the two statements from each other, though if we tried it may look like so: Lloyd George’s domestic policies had failed, leading to growing public discontent. Workers saw the dole as miserly and the middle class saw the taxation as excessive. In layman’s terms, the idea of an all-party coalition was no longer realistic. These reasons may contribute exclusively to the first statement, as they no longer made him an electoral asset. ‘Diehard’ Conservatives had been alienated by the supposed ‘softness’ of the Treaty of Versailles and were appalled at the Irish settlement. Conservative MPs for rural constituencies had been side-lined as farmers were suffering due to domestic policies and falling wheat prices. Coupled with Lloyd George’s stance on Chanak led to the Tories no longer needing him. Despite vast areas of manoeuvrability it is hard to deny that Lloyd George’s course was one mapped out by the Conservatives from the start, and that they would be the force that would ultimately undo him. The Conservatives would inevitably only keep Lloyd George for as long as they needed him- he was not one of their own, but a Liberal, after all- and Lloyd George’s own failings both on a personal, national and international level simply helped to facilitate the Conservatives getting rid of him sooner rather than later.